What has been your biggest comic reading disappointment?

The second half of Jaime Hernandez's Locas was a real disappointment on first read, but I've changed my mind about that. Knowing you weren't going to get "The Continuing Adventures of Maggie and Hopey" any more, like, ever, it's better the second time.

Justify this analogy. Show your workings. Use diagrams as neccesary.

PPS Cerebus wins this thread.

my own biggest ever disappointment is probably Arkham Asylum, which is shite.

Ha, this issue was very disappointing for me, too! As was the one below (awesome cover, though).

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/3182/200/3182_2_1.jpg

Justify this analogy. Show your workings. Use diagrams as neccesary.

I'm going to try and re-read (and finish this time) The Invisibles, at some point this year, will report back.

'Love & Rockets' - I need to read more of this, but so far I'm still stuck in the really surprisingly badly written Sci-fi mechanics stuff

'Strangers in Paradise' - again, I thought this was meant to be groundbreaking - or even good. So far it isn't, and I really wish I hadn't bought the first 3 books in one go, but had actually tried it first. Bugger.

Why, exactly, does everyone hate 'Killing Joke'? It's just a Batman/Joker story, but pretty much the best Batman/Joker story I've read.

ex machina seconded - not sure exactly what went wrong w/ that comic.

you know go back to killing joke as i did recently, not remembering much about it at all besides the fact that i was kinda let down by it in the first place... and it was great!

you should have asked somebody! it's always been derivative and shit

Don't set that bar too high!

Yeah, it really clicks into place during the early story (I forget which, it's about 100 or so pages into Locas) with that great panel of, er, Hopey slapping Maggie on the butt.

The mechanics stuff is (imo) pretty undreadable, but it's worth slogging through to set up the later, much better stuff.

Arkham Asylum - little substance there, and even though I don't have nothing against McKean, I don't think his type of illustrations fit comics very well.

The finale of From Hell - an otherwise brilliant, highly realistic comic goes into supernatural mumbo jumbo for no proper reason at all expect to illustrate Moore's excentrities.

I generally really like stories that start off as one genre and turn into another, but I do agree that the direction to go is boringly generic --> charmingly idiosyncratic, not the other way around.

1) stuff that you knew would disappoint, but you wanted to believe wouldn't disappoint, AND YOU WERE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME (cf. Infinite Crisis, House of M, Civil War)
2) stuff that everyone says is great, but it lets you down (cf. initial Chuck Austen hyphy, the collected works of GEOFF! JOHNS! and JEPH! LOEB! and KEVIN! SMITH!, Peter David's Supergirl, Jim Mafhood)
3) stuff that started off great / good, and descended into meh (cf. every Judd Winick superbook ever, Powers, The Pulse, JMS Spidey, Rucka's Wonder Woman, Rucka's Wolverine, Claremont's X-stuff post-JR JR, etc etc etc)

Tho all of these tie in to Tom's OTM post re: this is way of the comic work.

- Warren Ellis' newuniversal (It's the New Universe back!! VS It's Warren Ellis on autopilot and a title all in lower case)

- Dan Slott's mysterious post-Civil War project (Dan Slott! Doing something so amazing it's been a secret for months!! vs Oh god, it's going to be a Speedball book isn't it)

Also I'm AMAZED nobody's mentioned the bulk of One Year Later, which was such a good idea and SO badly handled (and has been a complete bust sales-growth wise, apparently: if it wasn't for 52 I'd be surprised at DiDio still being in a job)

Well, OYL was guaranteed to be a sales bust past the initial push, especially if they stop using the OYL trade dress 2 months in. Note to DC - pick a direction, and STICK WITH IT. (Also, planning helps.)

Re: new Slott - it's supposed to be something TOTALLY DIFFERENT than the funny fun Slott's known for. Which means it'll be DARK SPEEDBALL.

Also, please note that Marvel thinks they're actually going to sell TPBs of the 1st 7 issues of Star Brand for $18. LOL DOODS.

We're waiting for you to finish One Beer Later!

This is pure mentalism and calls your taste level into question.

Yeah, One Year Later seems to have involved a lot of dropping the ball. Except Batman and Detective are quantum-level better.

Did you guys see the new solicit for Feb's Detective Comics? Aside from the art credits, it's the greatest thing ever.
One of Bruce Wayne's oldest friends is found dead in Gotham Bay, ripped apart by a mysterious sea monster. As he investigates the bizarre death, Batman is drawn into a fatal encounter with the murderous creature.

And I am shocked that nobody's mentioned Dark Knight Strikes Again yet.

This is pure mentalism and calls your taste level into question.

How come? In my opinion comic art, however important it is, should always serve the story, and not make it too hard for the reader to follow the plot. McKean's art, on the other hand, tends to draw too much attention to itself, and often just distracts from the story. There are exceptions of course, since certain types of stories fit better with his nonlinear style (Signal to Noise is the first to come to mind).

Yeah, that one issue of Wonder Woman was kick-ass.

And I am shocked that nobody's mentioned Dark Knight Strikes Again yet.

I think were already a lot of 'bridge out' signs along that particular road beforehand.

Also The Pitt, and the first 3-4 issues of each title afterwards (probably up to The Draft but not including it), are the best ever superhero comics take on the War on Terror - all the more impressive for being 15 years early!

Cages? A Glass Of Water? Uptown Ruler? this is total mentalism.

I haven't actually read any of these, I'm only familiar with McKean's mainstream work. So yeah, he can probably do a readable comic, but his postmodern painting style is what he got famous for, right?

Anyway, my main disappointment with Arkham Asylum was that the story was very thin and seemed to exist mainly to create a showcase for McKean's art.

Everyone knows Arkham is rub, and McKean hated it before he did it. His Death condom story is totally plain drawing, the Hellblazer issue is a bit artwanky but still some lovely naturalistic drawing, the main thrust of the story is the human interactions and he has those down perfectly. Is there anything else from a "mainstream" publisher? There was an intro to the Sandman covers book but that doesn't count.

How many comics did he ever do in a "postmodern painting style"?

Then again:

my main disappointment with Arkham Asylum was that the story was very thin and seemed to exist mainly to create a showcase for McKean's art.

You're right, the flimsy story is artist McKean's fault.

In serio-fairness though, the Death condom thing was like an 18-panel how-to that Gaiman (or whoever) must've commissioned at the last second, hence the very simple line drawing (McKean through Death even mentions how little time/space he had to address such a big topic).

Which is all in distinction to his digital photography wank, like that Wolves thing he did w/ NG.

personally i don't care for his painted artwork at all - it seems stiffer and more illustrative (ie less 'comicsy') than sienkiewicz's more kinetic/pulpier style - while the Cages stuff seems overly indebted to Breccia snr

I didn't say that, I just said the flimsy story was the reason I didn't like the comic. Maybe Morrison couldn't come up with anything better, maybe he wanted to showcase McKean's art, maybe DC asked him to... Who knows?

I have a similar problem with comic writers who use too much descriptive captions, by the way.

No one's mentioned Black Orchid, which is very readable despite being a Neil Gaiman comic. And Gaiman and McKean's kids books, when he cuts back on the purple-ness, are quite good.

(xpost)

As for Mckean himself, my favorite things is his Sandman covers. I'd always assumed they were interpretations of the stories and would spend unbelievable amounts of time trying to "understand" them. While I think it's silly to think of comics as only a storytelling medium (What about Raw and Kramer's Ergot?), I think even if you do think of comics as only narrative, you should allow room for narrative to be complex, lyrical, and stylized. Saying that McKean doesn't interest you because he blocks the story isn't really that different from saying that you can't read literary fiction because, unlike genre fiction, the writing possesses literary style. With a lot of Mckean's work, I think his drawings function like a visual equivalent of the sort of writing style used in literary fiction: his style isn't actually problematic and doesn't block the story the way, it merely adds texture to it. I think the best critique, then, is that he's really a bourgeois artist, a prettifier rather than someone (like, say, Chris Ware) who forces us to interpret the world in a fundamentally different way. I think that's why I like his Sandman Covers so much--although they now look really ridiculous, dated rather than hip (in graphic design terms, not cultural ones), I think they're much more open and interesting than some of his other work.

That being said, I think that he's surprisingly restrained in his work on Mr Punch: after you read it a few times, it's much less over-the-top and more moving than it seems. The art is the narrative. And I think his straight-ahead stuff is surprisingly unpretentious: Black Orchid most obviously, and his ink drawings are really wonderful--not stuff at all, where is paintings often are.

Also: Hush.

hey girl how about i capture and torture you until you come to love me and follow my orders?

You're not really supposed to think of V as a role model of any sorts, I don't think.

Enki Bilal
"Showcase Superman" (but only because the hype sort of spoiled every single moment of awesome insanity in there, so when I finally read it the only stuff that was new to me were generic capturings of gangsters and such)
"Red Rocket Seven" (it's ok, but not half as good as "Solo")
"Judge Dredd: Innocents Abroad"
"Brownsville"
"Kingdom Come" (I got this back when hype for me = features in "Wizard")